The paper investigates the category of religious faith, religion and God presented and criticized by leading British atheist – Richard Dawkins. He is a biologist but his writings on faith and religion are highly popular all over the world. Dawkins argues that any form of faith in supernatural reality is opposite to rational and justified scientific investigation. One cannot be a scientist and believe in God at the same time because science is based on rational premises and religious faith is not. He claims that religious faith is a source of all evil in the world. In his criticism Dawkins does not undertake serious discussions with any contemporary philosophers of religion or theologians but he invents his own notion of religious faith. It seems that Dawkins’ atheistic position is a sort of belief which does not differ essentially from religious faith defined by him as a belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.In the paper some particular views of Dawkins are considered critically: a) a notion of religious faith, b) religious faith as a source of evil, c) a problem of existence and nature of God.

The idea of universal Darwinism is not new. It can be traced already in the K. Darwin’s works. Today, it comes back to life with a vengeance, especially through the publication of the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins. In the opinion of supporters of universal Darwinism, in all conditions where there is a population of multiplying objects that do not produce identical copies, and there is a selection, by which not all objects survive, there is a Darwinian evolution. The algorithmic character of evolution becomes the basis for justifying the application of Darwinian mechanisms to explain the phenomenon of human culture.In the article the concept of universal Darwinism altogether with its historical context is presented. The idea becomes the basis to provide naturalistic theories of culture and its evolution namely weak and strong theory of gene-culture coevolution. Some critical analysis of presented concepts is also submited.

This text lays out three distinct ways in which people who have been exposed to science are now responding to the following questions: “Does science rule out a personal God?” and “Is faith compatible with evolution?” The first kind of response claims that the natural sciences and religious faith are mutually exclusive. This is the conflict position. Its representatives include two main subgroups: (1) skeptics who believe that the natural sciences have made all religious claims unbelievable, and (2) people of faith who refuse to accept certain scientific ideas such as Big Bang cosmology and biological evolution. However, in the present text conflict refers only to scientific skeptics, those who claim that scientific method and discoveries now make religious faith and theology obsolete.A second type of response to the questions listed claims that science and faith are each concerned with different levels or dimensions of reality. Science and theology, according to this approach, ask completely different kinds of questions, and so it makes no sense to place them in competition with each other. The contrast approach, as we call it, maintains that there can be no real conflict between the claims of natural science and those of faith and theology. Contrast insists that faith and science are not competing for some common goal, so they cannot come into conflict with each other.A third approach is that of convergence. It might also be called “consonance,” “cooperation,” “contact,” or “conversation.” Convergence agrees with the contrast approach that religious faith and natural science are distinct ways of understanding the world, but it argues that the two inevitably interact. Convergence promotes this interaction. Its objective is to arrive at a synthesis in which both science and faith keep their respective identities while still relating closely to each other in a shared pursuit of intelligibility and truth. Convergence assumes that scientific discoveries matter to faith. In other words, scientific findings can make a significant difference in how we think about God and the meaning of our lives. Convergence wagers that science and faith, as long as they are not confused with each other, can together continue to a richer view of reality than either can achieve on its own.

One of the contemporary world-view disputes is the conflict between materialistic evolutionists and proponents of the intelligent design. Importantly, both sides of the dispute claim that their positions fall within the area of natural sciences. Discussions have been going on for over a hundred years, but there is no chance that they will end and that there will be some consensus. The source of this state of affairs seems to lie in the fact that this dispute is taking place on a philosophical level.In the article, I give arguments that both materialistic evolutionism and the concept of intelligent design are not scientific theories. I also compare the concepts of evolution and creation and show that the concept of creation is not a scientific concept. Creation is an act of the Creator who is not a space-time being. Therefore, his activities cannot be studied by methods appropriate to natural sciences.

The ‘naturalizing’ agenda in contemporary secularist philosophy is often presented in opposition to traditional theism. But looking at the history of the terms ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ reveals a discontinuity between how these terms are currently understood and how they were understood in the past. The modern ‘naturalist’, in insisting that all phenomena should be brought within the domain of the natural, is advancing a thesis that many classical, medieval and early-modern philosophers and theologians would have regarded as fairly self-evident. What has changed is not that there is a new determination to include within the natural domain what was previously excluded from it, but rather that there is a radical shift in how the natural domain is to be understood. This paper argues that the philosophically interesting question is not whether or not we should be naturalists, but which of two naturalisms we should adopt: secular naturalism, with its neutralist conception of nature in general and of human nature in particular, or theistic naturalism, according to which the natural world and our own nature bear the stamp of the divine. It turns out the former (secularist) view is vulnerable to serious difficulties, on both the epistemic and the moral fronts.

The evolution-creation controversy concerns the origin of life and its main forms. In practice, however, it exists on a completely different level, a philosophical and methodological one. As a rule, proponents of both positions quarrel about whether creationism is a scientific position. Evolutionists claim that creationist conceptions are incompatible with fundamental criteria identifying science. The main criterion is the principle of naturalism: in scientific explanations we cannot resort to causes from outside the material world. The paper analyzes some arguments of both sides and supports the idea that if recognizing intelligent design is a legitimate task of many scientific enterprises then there is no good reason to exclude this possibility in biology. In the author’s opinion scientists rather than philosophers of science should be engaged in the controversy.

In traditional debates concerning the process of evolution the naive teleological explanations were replaced by deterministic ones. New discoveries in quantum cosmology and quantum mechanics contributed to recognition of the cognitive value of teleological and quasi-teleological interpretations. In polemics dealing with cosmic evolution, the main explanatory function is played by the concept of downward causality which explains the emergence of new cosmic structures (G.F.R. Ellis, Paul P. Davies). A similar quasi-theological factor appears in Simon Conway Morris’ concept of biological convergence. After adopting this new cognitive perspective, one could explain many problems of evolutionary science that had no satisfactory explanation in earlier scientific debates.

The hard core of a theory is understood here as a set of those of its claims, which if contradicted by facts, lead to complete abandoning of the theory (in other cases scientists rather modify theoretical statements of minor importance). I argue therefore that it is an illusion that a set of statements about variation and natural selection is such a hard core of Darwinistic theory. In real practice these statements are compatible with almost all imaginable facts, therefore they have non-empirical character. They are only a camouflage for deeper and more fundamental claims, philosophical ones, and more exactly: materialistic, naturalistic and antireligious ones. In this paper the I analyze a number of citations proving that leading evolutionists, from Darwin onwards, openly accepted this philosophical beliefs which are the true hard core of evolution.

The dialogue between science and religion held by Józef Życiński presents a vision, in which the two disciplines exist complementarily and complete each other. In his opinion the basis of the dialogue is a reliable methodology, in which the very fundamental issue is methodological naturalism. Życiński suggests that apparent conflicts stem from incorrect interpretation of the Holy Bible or fundamentalist understanding of science. He therefore provides the right, in his opinion, interpretation of the Book of Bible and the Book of Nature. Józef Życiński demonstrates that in Christianity we deal with affirmation of rationality. This, among others, is the reason we should talk about Christian sources and inspirations of contemporary science.

In the paper, the basic elements of the conception of “open secularism” presented by J. Mac- lure and Ch. Taylor in their book Secularism and Freedom of Conscience (2011) are described. I point out that one of the defining feature of Maclure’s and Taylor’s theory of political secularism consists in supporting the “accommodation measures” which aim at protecting the freedom of conscience. In the next part of the article the main standpoints of the debate concerning the status of conscientious convictions are characterized and the “subjective” account of the freedom of conscience put forward by Maclure and Taylor is presented. In the following part of the paper Cecile Laborde’s critique of the subjective freedom of religion and Maclure’s reply is summarized. In the last part of the paper I try to show that the presentation of the subjective account of conscientious convictions in Secularism and Freedom of Conscience cannot be reconciled with Taylor’s conception of“strong evaluations”.

The article was inspired by chapters 6–7 of Ryszard Kleszcz’s book Logika, metafilozofia, wszechmoc. Siedem studiów filozoficznych (Logic, Metaphilosophy, Omnipotence. Seven Philosophical Studies) published in Polish in 2021. These chapters concern this part of metaphysics, which in the terminology inspired by scholastic distinctions was referred to as the philosophy of God, and is now placed within the framework of philosophical theology or philosophy of religion. I focus on three questions: 1) How to distinguish research in the philosophy of religion from research in the sciences of religion? 2) Can the limiting of research, typical of a large number of philosophers of religion, to monotheism in the world’s largest religions, and more specifically to Christianity, be convincingly justified without revealing their religious beliefs? 3) Is classical theism the correct articulation of the Christian meaning of the word “God”. In reply to the first question, I argue that a philosopher of religion is one who directly or indirectly takes a positive or negative stand on the cognitive character, especially truthfulness (Kleszcz would prefer to say “justification”) of religious beliefs or experiences. My reply to the second question, unlike Kleszcz’s, is negative: the philosopher’s disclosure of his own attitude to religion does not betray the ideal of objectivity; on the contrary, it promotes fairness in relation to the readers, and eliminates a certain kind of theoretical hypocrisy found in supporters of a philosophy practiced in a supposedly neutral way towards their own beliefs. My answer to the third question is also negative. What we need today is a less conservative philosophy of religion, bolder in its claims, than the one proposed by Ryszard Kleszcz—namely, one that imitates the way of practicing philosophy by the old masters, e.g. by St. Thomas Aquinas, consisting in the search for the rational foundations of Christianity, and not one that recognizes the results of the old masters’ findings, for example, on the nature of God, as fundamentally final and corrigible only in minor details.

Celem artykułu jest obrona dwóch tez: pierwszej, że istnienie zdarzeń przypadkowych jest do pogodzenia z istnieniem Boga oraz tezy drugiej, że przypadek może być częścią Bożej opatrzności. Koniunkcja obu powyższych tez nazwana jest w artykule tezą kompatybilizmu. Argumentacja w obronie kompatybilizmu opiera się na danych współczesnej nauki oraz na idei wszechmocnego Boga Stwórcy. Porządek argumentacji w artykule jest następujący. W części drugiej przedstawiony jest historyczny kontekst oraz podstawy doktrynalne pojęcia opatrzności. W części trzeciej omówiony jest argument za nieistnieniem Boga oparty na założeniu głoszącym istnienie zdarzeń przypadkowych w świecie oraz przedstawiona jest krytyka tego argumentu. W części czwartej prezentowane są możliwe modele działania Boga w świecie, w ramach których przyjmuje się istnienie zdarzeń przypadkowych. W części piątej i ostatniej rozważana jest idea Bożej doskonałości obejmującej takie atrybuty jak wszechmoc, wszechwiedzę, doskonałą dobroć i suwerenną wolę Bożą.

Dariusz Łukasiewicz wyróżnia sześć pojęć przypadku, spośród których jedne (C3, C5, C6) są spójne z ludzką wolnością rozumianą po libertariańsku, a inne nie (C1, C2, C4). W tym eseju argumentuję na dwa sposoby, że teiści powinni odrzucić przypadek ontologiczny (C1) i odwołać się zamiast tego do nieredukowalnej sprawczości w odniesieniu do zdarzeń, które nie są opatrznościowo wyznaczone przez Boga. Moje argumenty zależą od jednoznacznego rozumienia twierdzeń, że Bóg jest kochającym sprawcą oraz że istoty ludzkie, w swoim najlepszym zachowaniu, są kochającymi sprawcami. Łukasiewicz zakłada milcząco, że takie twierdzenia cechuje niewłaściwy antropomorfizm. Opowiadam się za antropocentryzmem i będę bronić jednoznaczności.

The relation of emergence allows to understand life as a key emergent quality for the biology. We find number of examples of emergent phenomena in the chemistry and in the biology. However, there is a lack of a clear explication of understanding both the emergence and its biological exemplification. Conditions of the biological emergence, which are formulated in the current literature, help to fill that gap and to provide a satisfying definition of that relation. At the same time it throws a new light on the debate for a research paradigma between the reductionism and the emergentism. After a time of underlying differences, today the main attention is given to their likeness and possibilities for cooperation of those two apprehensions.

For hundreds of years the theory of creationism according to which people were created purposely by omnipotent and omniscient God caring for his creatures were the primary and fundamental idea of Western civilization.According to the contemporary scientific view all creatures appeared on earth as a result of purposeless process of random mutations and natural selection. Only Nature exists, and if we are going to say the same about God, we deny at the same time that He influences the way the world goes in any way. According to Johnson it is this metaphysical naturalism and not the empirical data, that is the main tenet of Darwinism. Johnson claims that that the incompatibility of the naturalistic and biblical stories is fundamental and there is no possibility of any compromise between them.Naturalistic methodology of science limits the kinds of explanation of the world that can be regarded as acceptable. But according to Johnson the lack of any serious alternative methodology is very disadvantageous for contemporary science, which should search for truth and not just for the best naturalistic explanations of the phenomena.

The author analyzes, from the point of view of the philosophy of culture, the historical and contemporary issue of the relationship between religion and technology. As a result of this philosophical reflection, he states that this relationship can take four different forms. The presented typology of the relationship between religion and technology then becomes a tool to find an answer to the question of whether world religions in their worldview and institutional dimensions can constructively (and not only pessimistically and critically) relate to the increasingly complex civilization issues at the turn of the XX and XXI century.

W artykule argumentuje się, że konceptualne zasoby chrześcijaństwa obalają argument z ukryciu. Według autora zróżnicowanie Bożej miłości poddaje w wątpliwość słuszność rozumowania Schellenberga. Gdybyśmy rozumieli doskonałą miłość jako maksymalną i równą troskę oraz utożsamianie się ze wszystkimi i dla wszystkich, wtedy Boża miłość pociągałaby za sobą Bożą bezstronność, ale z powodu konfliktu interesów między ludźmi doskonała Boża miłość nie może być maksymalna.